Lucius is the young, wealthy and curious protagonist of Apuleius’s Metamorphoses. Over the course of the book, Lucius undergoes a physical and emotional journey and emerges a humbler version of his essential self: a kind, compliant, and curious young man.
In Book One, also known as the Prologue to the main story, we meet Lucius, who meets two fellow travelers while on the road to Thessaly. We don’t learn of his name until Book Two, and the information we learn then contradicts the information the narrator presents of himself in Book One. For the purposes of this essay, I will adopt Apuleius’s method and present all the information and the readers decide for themselves which of the contradictory stories is true.
Lucius asks the rhetorical question himself: Quis ille? Who is this man. He is from a family that comes from Mount Hymettus in Attica, from Corinth, and from Taenarus in Sparta. He is, then, a Greek. He studied in Latium and there learned to speak Latin, in which he is telling this tale. He travels to Thessaly because his mother is from there and through her is descended from Plutarch and Sextus. After this recital of his pedigree, Lucius treats us to some indication of his character when he kindly takes care of his weary mount and lets the horse eat and rest. Overhearing two other travelers’ discuss stories, he begs to learn more. He claims to not be nosy, but longs to know everything and certainly more. From this we learn that he is kind, curious, social, and a bit audacious, as he refuses to let the storyteller flag while in the telling of his tale. He is also a bit impulsive, as we learn when he relates a story of almost choking while engaging in a bit of competitive eating with some buddies at a dinner table. After the storyteller finishes his fantastic tale and the other traveler has declared it to be a lie, Lucius refuses to declare that anything is impossible and shows a tendency towards fatalism, believing Fate to control his ultimate end: “Whatever and however the Fates have decreed, that’s how it all turns out for us who are doomed to die” (Relihan 17).
What we have learned so far of Lucius is from his own words and actions. At the end of Book One, his host Milo describes Lucius as having a gentlemanly demeanor, aristocratic clothing, and a polite deference, a description Lucius confirms later when he allows Milo to talk well into the night long after Lucius himself would have preferred to go to bed. Lucius shows his quick mind by excusing himself from relying on Milo’s infamously meager hospitality and provides for his horse and himself through his own means. He provides for his horse, anyway, and while attempting to provide for himself, he overpays for fish and then allows his old friend Pytheas to ruin the fish in a show of contempt for the price he paid for it. Lucius appears to be easy-going, independent, and with a compliant personality. When events go badly for him, he as often watches them happen in despair as he acts to amend them. Continually throughout Metamorphoses, Lucius is amazed, astonished, thunderstruck, or brought to tears by events, from the loss of his dinner fish to his miraculous cure at the end.
If Book One establishes Lucius essential deference to companions and to Fate, then Book Two solidifies his characterization as one consumed by curiosity. Book Two opens with Lucius informing the reader of his being driven to distraction by his eagerness to learn of signs and wonders, and of magic. , Lucius encounters Byrrhena, an old friend of his mothers who fills in some more of Lucius’s back story and witnesses herself of Lucius’s good looks and wealthy and aristocratic upbringing. It is Byrrhena that informs Lucius that his host’s wife is a witch, and Lucius acts on his curiosity, flying back to the house in search of magic and amorous adventures with the slave-girl. After demonstrating again his trusting and compliant nature by vouching for the prophetic abilities of the known con artist Diophanes, Lucius trusts the slave-girl Photis when she warns him that slaughter and death will come if he leaves the house on the night of the Risus festival. When he becomes the inadvertent author of that foretold slaughter and death, Lucius never suspects that Photis might have more privileged information than she divulged. By attacking the robbers, Lucius stays in character as one who takes care of those he feels loyal to, and also as one who is impulsive at times perhaps beyond that which is wise. When the next morning he is dragged into the town square to undergo a trial for the “slaughter” of the night before, he can only cry, and then explain. He is mystified again when the ruse is revealed. Lucius gives the impression that he is constantly seeking for wonders and then is awestruck when the secrets he finds are not instantly comprehensible to him. However, this never dampens his curiosity or zeal. He continues to act on his curiosity and gullibility, and as a result find himself transformed into an ass. He trusts Photis’s plan to wait until morning to find a cure, and then he is swept along by amazingly unlucky events when he is captured by the robbers that come to the house that night.
As an ass, Lucius’s character stayed largely the same. He was helpful when he could be, and his aid to the kidnapped bride temporarily earned the greatest life that could be provided for an ass. He continually listened and investigated when opportunities arose, and this curiosity again brought him close to disaster when he was about to forced to have sex with a woman accused of despicable crimes.
In Book 11, the novel changes from a series of profane adventures of an ass to a story of conversion and discipleship. Book 11 opens with Lucius once again thunderstruck by the latest turn of events and, finally, in his despair and extremity, he prays for help, and the Goddess Isis answers. Isis miraculously transforms him back into a human being, and he is informed that in return for his cure, he will now belong to Isis. Lucius’s character remains the same, seasoned now with a few doses of humility, as he is once again astonished to the point of speechlessness by the turn of events, this time fortuitous. He complies with what is asked of him and becomes a follower of Isis. His curiosity remains with him, and instead of longing to know the mysteries of magic, he yearns to be inducted into the secrets of Isis. After this happens for him, he rejoices in the new knowledge and then yearns for more. He then is also initiated into the cult of Osiris, and then voluntarily gives up meat and women in the service of his goddess and in the pursuit of greater knowledge.
The sacricity of the secrets change, but Lucius’s essential characteristics of kindness, compliance, and curiosity remain consistent throughout Metamorphoses. The enthusiasm that brought him so much grief he later turns to the service of the goddess, and the compliance that led him to be a gullible dupe of at least one (Diophanes) and possibly more (Photis) now leads him to be a disciple of Isis. Whether Lucius’s days of being a fool for trusting those who promise him mysteries end or continue with his conversion is a decision Apuleius grants to his readers.
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